Blog Post #5 - Reflection on Oral Presentation

With our oral presentation last Tuesday, my team has finally marked an end to our involvement in the ES2007S research project. Naturally, my first reaction towards the end was that of elation, especially since my team was the first to present, and consequently, the first to finish. However, as I looked back at the progress my team has made over the past few weeks on the project, as well as our presentation, I realize that there is still much room for improvement. Let me just mention a few points I have noted myself:

Delivery
Firstly, I felt that my team’s slides were probably not at minimalist as they could have been, and thus, we, the presenters, were unable to fully capture the audience’s attention on ourselves. In line with the recommendations by Garr Reynolds, my team has aimed to use as few words on the slides as possible. However, my team (or at least I) is nevertheless not quite used to not having information written explicitly on the slides and felt that the audience might not be used to minimalist approach to slides as well. This proved to be a stumbling block for us in following Reynolds’ suggestions. However, having experienced the audience’s fixation with screen during our presentation, I know now that I should have followed Garr Reynolds’ advice more closely, and aim to do so in future presentations.

Secondly, I have been told (and know) that I referred to cue cards a little too much during my presentation. I think that this is because it was my first time presenting with only diagrams on the slides. As such, I realize that I could have done with a bit more practice, such that I can remember clearly what to say during each stage, rather than to have to refer.

Thirdly, I felt that (and as noted by Rohan) I could have infused a little more humour into my team’s presentation and made it a tad light-hearted. It has been, and will always remain my nature to aim to invoke some laughter during presentations. However, I suppose I lacked the confidence to do so during this presentation as my team was the first to go, and my preparations for the presentation were slightly lacking. As such, I aim to be better prepared in future presentations, and to try to always infuse a little intelligent humour.

The fourth, and I suppose the most important point, is that I felt that I could have done with more practice. My team had originally planned to have a rehearsal on the day before the presentation, but realized then that our slides had to be improved. As such, we spent much of our time working on the slides, and did not quite run through what we wanted to say. Granted that there was a limitation on time, I feel that I should have planned the rehearsal earlier, so that my team could have been prepared for contingencies such as this.

Content
In terms of the content, I felt that my team’s recommendations were not exactly well thought out. The main contributory factor was perhaps that there was a lack of time and proper resources. Although my team have tried to cover as much as ground as possible in support of our proposals, I would have been more comfortable with a feasibility study. This is because I felt that I could better convince the audience of the impact of our recommendations if such a study was done. In retrospect, I feel that I should have gotten the team to conduct a little bit of research into the feasibility of our proposal, even though it was not explicitly required in the project.

Conclusion
Having said my piece, I hope that those who had attended my presentation would be able to give me further comments, or simply express your opinion on whether you agree with my self-assessment.

And lastly, I would like to thank my team members Nicole and Godwin, with whom I have truly enjoyed working with. I feel each of you have contributed selflessly and meaningfully to the project, and that I could not have hoped for better team dynamics.